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This will get you very basic recommendations, which is a nice start. But will be quite limited.

But you could, and have been able do this just as easily with compression.

Compress A. Measure the file size.

Compress B. Measure the file size

Compress C. Measure the file size

Compress A + B. Measure the file size. Compare it to (the size of A + the size of B). If A and B are similar the compressed file size will be much smaller than the combined file size of A compressed + B compressed.

Compress A + C. Measure the size. If A and C are similar the compressed file size will be much smaller than the combined file size of A compressed + C compressed.

Compress B + C. Measure the size.

Also see Simon Willison work on using embeddings for similarities: https://simonwillison.net/2023/Oct/23/embeddings/#related-co...


Nice complexity you got there. Would be a shame if something... quadratic were to happen to it.


That won't measure semantic similarity, at least with typical compression algorithms.


Fox News, Twitter and Meta are far worse influences on American society than TikTok.

And every big US platform is just a big siphon for the NSA when it comes to non U.S. persons.

The stupidity and hypocrisy of this ban and unban is hilarious.

It's the tech policy analog of the Iraq War (on the level of stupidity, loss of standing, inevitable consequences etc).

Not saying this ban is equivalent to a decision that killed 1M+ people, lead to ISIS, and created the migrant crisis and more


> The stupidity and hypocrisy of this ban and unban is hilarious.

Your adversary does not care about morals, but will leverage yours in his favour.


I founded and run a SaaS technology company for publishers. I think there's a rich vein here that hasn't really been explored.

[Outpost](https://outpost.pub)

We work with pubs like 404Media and Platformer

Incorporated in California.

Happy to answer questions


I want to see a small ISP challenge this.

The 6th circuit said ISPS aren't telecoms when knocking down net neutrality.

This order is dependent on ISPs on ISPs being telecoms. So is the CALEA spying mandate.

Fight this and force the feds to live with this decision.


California's net neutrality law is in great shape. It didn't rely on Brand X.

New York's broadband affordability law is in good shape too.


Ah, you're right. Hooray.

CA's net neutrality law was challenged in court and found to be lawful due to Mozilla Corp. v. FCC, and I knew that case hinged upon Brand X. At the time, Ajit Pai was trying to prevent states from making their own net neutrality laws.

Them striking down the state preemption was separate from the Brand X use, it turns out.

> In neither case [Ray v. Atlantic Richfield Co and Arkansas Electric] was the source or existence of statutory authority for the agency to preempt state regulation at issue. Nor do those cases speak to a statutory scheme in which Congress expressly marked out a regulatory role for States that the federal agency has attempted to supplant. If Congress wanted Title I to vest the Commission with some form of Dormant-Commerce-Clause-like power to negate States’ statutory (and sovereign) authority just by washing its hands of its own regulatory authority, Congress could have said so

p140 https://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-courts/cadc/18-10...


No, the feds require CALEA-backdoors. Absent CALEA, a telecom could say we don't have the data or the capability


What a load of horseshit.

Yeah, if a nation-state thinks you are a bad enough actor, they might use a high power way to get at you. See Pegasus, for instance

But those exploits are rare, expensive and can be blown.

No one has ever said Signal is perfect security.

But it is damn good. Your SMSes aren't sitting in plaintext on your mobile ISPs network. You aren't going to have them intercepted by a fake mobile tower. And if you and your recipients use disappearing messages, good luck to any prosecutor trying to get them off a device.

And as for Apple sending a fake update? Might could happen but 1) Apple fought this once and 2) it'd be hard to do in any widespread way without being detected

Saying Signal protects you from fuck all is not just wrong, it's irresponsible AF.

It's like saying that locks, firewalls, alarm systems, curtains and network monitoring don't work because some people know how to defeat them.

Signal is a great security upgrade for almost anyone. I love seeing more people use it.

Normalizing encryption is great.


[flagged]


The amount of one-off work this would take is quite high, so the amount of motivation for a company like Apple to say “No, you can’t legally compel us to to allocate engineering resources to this” is also quite high.

My point is that they (and other tech companies) would be highly incentivized against implementing something like a malicious update targeting a single device/user based purely on capitalistic motivations, rather than philosophical/ethical ones.


I wish I could agree with you but the real world doesn't work this way. Companies that don't play ball get broken up with anti-trust. Or what happened to the CEO (former CEO) of Qwest happens.

The "infrastructure" for the targeted updates is implemented by compartmentalized teams, who will be comprised of the clearance community, and the "external" people who work with them are a part of the clearance community.


>I wish I could agree with you but the real world doesn't work this way.

The real world does work this way. Businesses make business decisions based on bottom-line impact, and businesses generally push back very strongly against governments whenever a government asks them to do things that will cause them to make less money and/or waste money.

>The "infrastructure" for the targeted updates is implemented by compartmentalized teams, who will be comprised of the clearance community, and the "external" people who work with them are a part of the clearance community.

I agree that would be how it would work if it actually happened, but I think you overestimate the appetite (and even ability) of big tech to have any desire to do this kind of thing.

If you are implying that there are teams within big tech companies who secretly do this kind of thing, even against the wishes of other engineering teams (including security engineering teams) within the company... well that seems like a recipe for getting some of the company's most talented and highly paid security engineers incredibly pissed off if they ever find out — and it's very likely they would eventually find out, because it would be extremely difficult to hide this kind of thing over time.


How about you tell the former CEO of Qwest, or William Binney, or Jacob Applebaum how it is you are so sure you think the world works. I implore you, respectfully, to consider what they have told the world and give some time, on top of the time you have probably already given this topic -- give some extra time to this topic, after seeing what they have shared with us.

  https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-telecom-exec-who-refused-nsa-snooping-is-out-of-prison-and-hes-talking/

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Binney_(intelligence_official)#Whistleblowing

  https://media.ccc.de/v/30C3_-_5713_-_en_-_saal_2_-_201312301130_-_to_protect_and_infect_part_2_-_jacob

> and businesses generally push back very strongly against governments whenever a government asks them to do things that will cause them to make less money and/or waste money.

Did Facebook and Twitter do this when the federal government told them to censor?

What did Mike Benz' interview with Tucker (whether you dislike or like Tucker is neither here nor there so let's not get distracted by that) in February of this year (2024) reveal to all of us?

> of big tech to have any desire to do this kind of thing.

Apple is and always will be subservient to NSA, CIA, and the State Department. If you believe today -- after taking a moment to really, truly, seriously think about it -- that it is the other way around, you have a very special kind of stunted personal development.

> (including security engineering teams) within the company...

I respectfully implore you to look into the publicly available information about how many people at Facebook, Google, Twitter (pre-Musk), and Apple have NSA or other "glowie" backgrounds.

> well that seems like a recipe for getting some of the company's most talented and highly paid security engineers incredibly pissed off

You are correct here.

> if they ever find out

They won't, not unless they already have the appropriate clearance, and once they do they will take those secrets to the grave, or else -- unless they can make it to Moscow instead of a black site operated on foreign soil.

> and it's very likely they would eventually find out

Provided they can get into parts of buildings, buildings that aren't even on the same campus, that they aren't authorized to get into, which will never happen. So..


Patent trolls and big pharma. The bill would make it harder to challenge shitty parents and to make generic drugs.

As a small software company owner who fought off a patent troll who claimed to have patented the idea of showing related content to a reader, I can confidently say patent trolls are parasites that deserve everything the courts have heaped on them in the last 10 years.

Call your senator and tell them that the patent trolls are killing innovation and to vote NO on PREVAIL


> The bill would make it harder to challenge shitty parents and to make generic drugs.

Sounds like they’re really against teen rebellion :)


Tickets. Email. Signal (emergencies and sensitive info only).

Async all the things.

Keep devs out of meetings.

Don't track work hours.

Never do Slack/Teams unless a client pays a lot to suck you into that or if they pay a very large number to have your devs in it as well.


Love it. I had one of these next to my kitchen sink at eye level and chromecasted to the kitchen stereo.

A big volume button was so nice.

Can't wait to flash this and resuscitate it


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